This week in class one, we began our mini topic of fairy tales. We all had a bit of a shock when on Monday, a beanstalk mysteriously grew in the middle of our classroom. After some investigation work, we learnt the story of Jack and the beanstalk and decided that Jack must have visited our classroom over the weekend. We used the story to generate lots of amazing child initiated activities such as setting up our own fairy tale shop to buy real beans using coins, made our own paper stick figures to re-enact the story and even grew our own beanstalks in class. We all thought carefully about the things our beans would need and made sure to place our pots in a sunny spot in class... have a look during Monday’s open session, to see if ours have grown!

As well as Jack and the beanstalk, we have also looked at many other fairy tales this week including Snow White, The Gingerbread Man, Rumpelstiltskin and The Three Bears. We learnt that most traditional tales have a lesson/moral in them to teach us and we thought hard about what these might be. We also listened carefully for things which happen 3 times as we learnt this is another common feature of traditional tales. Next week, we will learn some more fairy tales and end our half term with some sewing as we create our own felt fairy tale puppets!

What a fantastic week we have had following our Indian Arts Days! Some of the activities we have been up to this week include…

Peacock paper plate collages

Learning some funky Bollywood dancing in our Indian Dance workshop

Creating ICT Rangoli prints using the ‘Colour Magic’ software

Sculpting our own Diwa lamps using art dough

Making origami paper sculptures in Indian colours

Creating our own Indian flags using lentil collage!

Reading the traditional Indian folk tale of ‘The Tiger Child’

Mendhi inspired paint printing

Creating paper lotus flowers

And of course some Indian cooking as we made our tasty vegetable samosas!

The children have all thoroughly enjoyed their week and loved having the opportunity to work in different classrooms and have different teachers. If you haven’t already, make sure you check out some of the photos Mrs Peddie has captured, on the photo gallery page above!

Reminders/ Other

Please can everyone have a good look at home for any pin badges and library/ daily reading books please? We are missing quite a few at the moment and would very much like to have them back.

A huge thank you for all of your junk modelling resources! Safe to say, the children have been making the most of the junk modelling and we now have enough boxes and pots to last us for quite a while!

Children have now been fully trained up about how to change their books every day. Each child has been coming in, replacing their book each morning after they have read at home and has been making sure they replace it with a new one (from the correct colour box) each day. Whilst we remind all children every day to be resourceful and take responsibility for changing their books, you may also wish to remind them each night/ morning too if you notice they have forgotten! So far we are very proud of them for using their learning powers and organising themselves, well done Class One!

Next week, we will start our mini-topic of fairy tales. As a little challenge, see if you can read any fairy tales at home, in preparation.

This week in Class One, we have based our superhero learning around the story of ‘Supertato’. This Monday we arrived in Class to find an unwelcome surprise…. Frozen peas everywhere! And on the carpet, a letter from a nasty villain along with our hero Supertato, trapped under some cling film. There could only be one villain nasty enough to do something like this…..the Evil Pea! Class One set to work straight away to create our own WANTED posters, featuring a description of our green nemesis and a piece of advice to tell people what to do if they spot him. We posted our WANTED posters all around the school and waited for someone to find him…

Luckily, after a week of superhero maths, (finding 2 digit numbers on a 100 grid/ adding 2 numbers together), some computer work (creating our own heroes using the DC Kids, ‘Hero me!’ game), and some fun pea squishing with mashers in Busy Fingers time, we received some good news from Mrs Rule in the office….the evil pea had been captured! To celebrate, we used our art skills to create our own Supertatos using real potatoes! We then finished the week with some Superhero aerobics in PE and made our Supertatos come to life using stop-motion apps on the IPads. It was great fun watching our videos back and our posters have amazed the rest of the school this week. Well done Class One heroes!

This week, the children have started our new mini topic of 'Superheroes'! We began the week with a fact finding session all about different heroes and villains. We learnt their real identities, powers and vehicles and enjoyed discussing which heroes would win in a battle. Then it was time to create our own superhero.... we began by splitting ourselves into groups and drew around each other. Next, we added powers to our outlines and drew on details. Last of all we presented our heroes to the class and explained their strengths and weaknesses; we had Changeboy, Powergirl, SuperNell, Icy Isaac and of course the ferocious Flash-bat girl! Ask us all about them at home so we can tell you everything we remember.

Later in the week, we acted our own superhero plays. We thought about how stories all have a clear beginning, middle and end and this helped us to structure our performance. The next day, we used our performance to write our own comic strip. Our class teachers were amazed with our writing, we all tried hard to think of our own ideas and many of us are now writing full sentences which can be read by an adult; so impressive!

In other news this week, we have been... learning about 'more and less', practising our directional vocabulary including learning about turning left, right, clockwise and anti-clockwise, have been using the laptops to create superhero pictures on the 'Tux Paint' and 'ColourMagic' software and have even attended hero training sessions with Mr Jefferies and Mr Smith. Next week we continue our superhero theme with a week of Supertato books and fun!

Welcome back everyone and happy New Year! We hope you have all had a restful and happy break. Just a short blog this week to say how well the children have settled back into class. Today, each child has been very busy making their own Christingle; make sure you test us on what each part means, when we come home tonight! All children have also been practising changing their books themselves today so hopefully all should come home with a new book. Please note that if there is no comment in the reading record to say your child has read, they will be unable to collect a new book from school so please make sure you write in, when you have read at home J

Notices.

Due to a busy few days, we will start our normal class reading rota on Monday. Children can also start their weekly visits to the library too.

Please make sure that children have all PE kit items within school every day. Unfortunately we are running very low on spare kits so it may mean your child cannot take part in the lesson if they do not have a full PE kit in school.

If you do have any old boxes/ junk modelling things at home e.g. plastic bottles, yoghurt pots, bottle lids, washing up bottles, cereal boxes and cardboard tubes (not toilet rolls), we would love to have them in for our junk modelling area! The more the better!

Firstly, a huge well done to all the children, for their fantastic nativity; Shine Star Shine! I hope you all enjoyed watching our Christmas story. The children have been working so hard and made us all very proud as they performed their hearts out for us all. A big thank you to all parents and grown-ups who came to watch; DVDs will be with you very soon! Your children have come such a long way in the one term they have been with us and we were delighted with their efforts. Make sure you have a look on the school gallery page too, to see the photos from our dress rehearsal!

As well as rehearsing for the show, we have been working with magnets during science this week and experimenting with objects that are magnetic. We had some wonderful explanations and experiments and the children had great fun testing out different objects. Christmas cards are in full swing and the children have been using their super learning powers to make them and write their messages. The children were encouraged to make their designs personal and it is lovely to see what they have all come up with.

A few small reminders…

Please sign up to an allocated food for our Christmas party using the list on the school gate (outside Class One). Thank you to all those who have done so already!

Next week will be the last week for library book changes and taking home reading books from class. After that, all books will be collected in for our usual end of term audit. Those of you who have school books at home floating around, if you could return them before the end of term, we would be extremely grateful!

PE bags will also come home next week. Any lost property left over in class will be passed down to the main box in the front office so please check here for any lost items.

Hello from Class One, we've had another jam packed week full of learning, adventures and fun!

The children have been doing so well learning their nativity lines and songs this week! We are now in full swing gearing up for the big event. The children are making us so proud with their acting skills.

If we could ask for you to continue learning lines and songs that would be great. Also please check book bags as some children may need to bring in a plain t-shirt/ tights for the dress rehearsals next week. If this is the case, your child will have a named letter in their book-bags.

We've had lots of arts and crafts going on this week and have incorporated maths.

The children have made paper chains and were put into groups. The competition was on to see which team could make the longest paper chain! We have also been making our Christmas hoops so make sure you have a look in the school hall, to spot some of our work.

Reminders

Wishing you another wonderful weekend and a great time at the Christmas fair tonight! Enjoy your weekends and we hope that all of the children have one last try at saying their nativity lines in a big, clear voice!

Class one have had another wonderfully busy week, Christmas nativity practice is in full swing and we can't wait for you to see the children in full costume acting and singing out our Christmas story. Thank you for helping the children at home with the songs I am sure you will all be familiar with them by show time.

The costumes for our nativity will be organised by us, however there may be a few extras we need and these items will be explained in a letter coming out next week. Thank you again for all of your support.

Please could we ask for an extra special push on lines over the weekend and to encourage your child to use their extra big and loud voices?

Exciting times have occurred in class one this week, our egg has hatched overnight and we can't believe how lucky we are to have Moz the monster as our class pet. I'm sure many of you may recognise Moz from the John Lewis advert but our Moz really did come from a hatched egg that we have nurtured for a week!!! The children have enjoyed showing Moz around the class room, reading all about Mos's adventures in literacy and letting Moz watch whilst we learn.

In maths this week we have been looking at time. The children have had little clocks and are getting use to "0 clock" we even played "what's the time Mr Moz and the children have tried to find the correct time on the clocks before the grown-ups.

Reminders:

A little reminder that the book fair is open after school today (Friday 24th November) and Monday morning before school (Monday 27th November) as well as after school on Monday.

Class one were taken to browse through the books yesterday so the children may have already spied a book they like.

We wish you a happy and restful weekend as we all gear up for Christmas.

What a busy week we have had in Class One! Firstly, a big thank you to all who were able to attend on Monday for family week, it was wonderful to watch the children thrive and show you all what they do in a day. The treasure hunt seemed to be a firm favourite and I hope you were all able to decode our hidden word.

In RE we have been working towards our big question, "show us what you know about the Holy Trinity- God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit."

The children have been drawing their interpretations of this big question and have come up with some wonderful thoughts and ideas. They have also been making some beautiful stained glass windows which you will be able to see displayed.

In PE the children have been working on their gymnastic skills, balancing and forward rolling and impressing us all with their coordination. They work really hard in PE and getting dressed and undresses has become a lot quicker.Could I please ask all parents to name all the children's clothing and encourage the children to practice getting dressed at home. Many thanks.

In Maths we have been looking at 3D shapes, the children have been counting faces and corners (vertices). We have had a look around the classroom to spot as many shapes as we can.

Our mini topic currently is dinosaurs and the excitement is over flowing now we have a "real life dinosaur egg" in class. We have been writing warning signs and danger signs to notify others to beware. I hear that the egg may hatch one day next week...watch this space! Class One have looked at all animals and what they eat, making them Herbivores, Omnivores or Carnivores. What long words for them to remember but the children have been super stars. Well done for a huge learning week class one. Let's see what we can discover next week.

Reminders

- You may find an envelope inside your child's book bag this weekend. This contains the lines for our Christmas Nativity! We ask kindly that you practise these at home with your child so that your child can use their biggest, clearest voice! (Please note, not all children have lines)

This week in Class One, we were very excited to have a visit from the Hitchin Fire Brigade! We were lucky enough to meet five fire fighters and test out some of our knowledge from our ‘People Who Help Us’ topic from last half term. The firefighters answered lots of questions in class and Miss Ingle even got to be dressed up in a fire-fighting outfit which was very funny! We had a look at some real jaws of life and found out that they are strong enough to lift up 18 cars and even cut through metal. Next, we went out to the playground where we saw a real fire engine/ ‘the appliance’. We were shown the sirens and hoses and we all had a go at squirting them onto the playground; it was great fun! Photos are inside each child’s learning journeys so you will be able to see your child in role as a real firefighter!

In other news this week, we have started a short mini-topic all about dinosaurs. We have been using books and technology to find out information and were amazed to learn how to use SIRI. We have all enjoyed asking it questions about dinosaurs and have been busy recording the answers on fact sheets. We have also been thinking about what dinosaurs eat and learnt all about carnivores, omnivores and herbivores. Test us at home to see if we can remember some of these tricky words!

Reminders.

. Don’t forget that next Monday is Class One’s turn at family week. All parents are invited to spend the afternoon in Class One where we have a variety of activities for you to try out. There will be paint out, an outside task and an afternoon play so you may wish to wear comfortable shoes and some layers for this!

. Friday will be the next school cake day (this time run by Class Four). We ask that children bring in 25p or 50p only wherever possible, to avoid lost change. Also, please ensure your child brings their money in wrapped in paper or a small envelope/ purse/ wallet/ sandwich bag. Unfortunately due to lots of lost money last time, we did have a few children who were unable to buy a cake.

Welcome back everyone, we hope you have all had a restful and happy half term last week. This week in Class One, we have been learning all about fireworks! We began the week with a journey back in time, 400 years ago where we met a rather scary character.... Guy Fawkes! The children loved finding out some child friendly facts about the Gunpowder Plot and took great pleasure in acting out the story, complete with a Guy, King James and some soldiers. Ask us about the Gunpowder Plot at home, to see what we can remember.

As well as our history learning, we have also been using our art skills this week, using printing techniques to make some beautiful firework pictures. We look forward to you seeing some of these soon during Family Week and Parents Evening.

We hope you all have a safe and happy fireworks weekend. Based on the children's interest, week we will be starting a short unit on dinosaurs next week. Have a look over the weekend to see if you can find out some interesting dinosaur facts in preparation.

Thank you also for some of the lovely homework we have had in! We hope you have all had a sheet in your child's book bag this week; if anyone is missing a homework grid, please let us know in class.

Well here we are at the end of our first half term of school, and what a half term it has been! This week we have been thinking about police officers and the children have been having great fun in role as ‘cops and robbers’ this week…we have even had a few traffic officers handing out speeding tickets to scooters in our outside area so watch out! We have also had a great time learning all about the festival of Diwali yesterday. The children dressed up in beautiful Indian clothing, created their own Diva lamps using clay, learnt the story of Rama and Sita and even created their own Rangoli patterns using coloured sand, powder and powder paint. Watch out for some of our lovely Diwali learning in our learning journeys soon!

Half term tasks

Over the half term, we ask that you can support your children in the following ways, by encouraging them to practise the following…

Children to practise forming each letter from the alphabet; both capital and lower case. Make sure they know the name of each letter as well as the sound it makes.

Children to recognise and write their numbers to 20. Want a challenge? Practise writing numbers to 100!

Children to learn one more and less than a number.

Learn how to pay for items using small coin amounts.

Please sure your child knows how to write their name! We are finding lots of children are having difficulty with this, this year.

Have some fun!

Thank you all for your continued support this half term. Wishing you all a great half term break!

This week in Class One, we have been thinking about people who keep us healthy. We watched a children’s video about hospital workers and learnt some great terminology, including the words paramedic, pharmacist, NHS and radiographer. We have had fun looking at X Rays and even using Mr Bony the skeleton, to identify and name the different bones and parts of the body. We have been singing the ‘skeleton dance song’ to help us with this and you can sing it too, by finding it on YouTube!

As well as the role of doctors and nurses, we have also been thinking about dentists and ways to keep our teeth clean. We practised brushing our teeth for two whole minutes, using music to help us identify when our time was up and we were surprised to learn what a long time this felt like. We have enjoyed brushing the dirt off of the pretend teeth and have loved being dentists in our role play area.

Next week we will be completing our topic of ‘People Who Help Us’ with a week on the police force and on Thursday, we will be learning all about the celebration on Diwali. Please feel free to research these over the weekend or make some fun things linked to the topic, to bring in for show and tell!

Happy Hedgehog Day from Class One! We have had a fantastic day today thanks to our visit from Hetty’s Hedgehog sanctuary and loved having the baby Hoglets in Class One. We learnt lots about how to look after Hedgehogs and learnt lots of new facts. Did you know for example that hedgehogs have up to 7000 spines on their backs or that they are born bald but grow their first spines within their first few hours! Along with our visit today, we also made paper-plate hedgehogs and iced hedgehog cakes, complete with chocolate button spikes! We hope you enjoy them tonight.

In other news this week, we have been learning all about people who keep us safe. We have been learning about the role of lollipop lady, learning about road signs and even conducting our own traffic survey! The children were extremely knowledgeable about how to cross a road safely and were able to demonstrate how to Stop, Look, Listen and Think during our demonstration which was really lovely to see!

We also learnt about how the fire-service keep us safe too, learnt what to do if the fire-alarm goes off and have been learning about what it is like to be a fire-fighter. The children were all very sensible as we practised what would happen if there were a real fire-alarm and we even practised how to make a 999 call in class, should there ever be an emergency.

Thank you for all of the WOW forms that we have had this week! We have some very talented children in class. Enjoy your weekend,

Class One was greeted this week with a bit of a mystery on Monday….a lost satchel in our outside area! Upon inspection, we noticed some envelopes, stamps, paper and royal mail signs inside; it was clear who the lost bag belonged to…the Jolly Postman!

Class One set to work writing letters to the postman to alert him of his lost bag. They added a contact number so that he could call the school and signed the letter off with their names in a polite way; the Class One teachers were very impressed with our sounding out skills. We have also built our own post office in class this week to sort out all the postman’s letters. We have been adding stamps onto our envelopes (and choosing first or second class varieties depending on how quickly we want our letters to reach our destinations) and have also been weighing out parcels, using the weighing scales. Other activities have included, buying items from the post office using 1 and 2p coins, creating new decorative door numbers for our houses, drawing pictures from the Alan Ahlberg story ‘The Jolly Postman’ and even dressing up as postal workers, complete with letter bags and royal mail hats!

Reminders

Next Friday will be 'hedgehog day' here at St Ippolyts! We will be having some special visitors come to school to see us and be having a themed day of hedgehog crafts. Can you help us to research some interesting hedgehog facts over the weekend in preparation?

Thank you for some of the WOW forms we have had in so far. It is lovely to celebrate your children’s successes with the class and we look forward to seeing some more! More WOW forms to be handed out soon.

This week in Class One, we have been thinking about people who help us at home!We read the Anthony Brown story, ‘Piggybook’ to help us start to think about all the different things that our grown-ups have to do every day.The story features some very amusing pictures in which all of the Piggot family start to transform into real pigs, thanks to their messy behaviour!This led to some great discussions about how we can help out at home and the children have been practising by measuring water into washing up jugs, making pretend dinners for their ‘families’ in the home corner and have even been designing some trophies, to say thank you to those who help us at home.

Next week, we will be reading the story of the Jolly Postman to begin to think about people who help us every day such a postmen/ladies and lollipop people.We will be posting letters using stamps and envelopes and will be practising crossing the road safely, using our zebra crossing and road sign toys in the outside area.

A big thank you to everyone who attended curriculum evening this week!I hope that it was helpful to you all and has given you a little more of an idea about what we get up to each day here in Class One! Next week will be our annual Harvest Festival at the church so we hope to see lots of you there.

Here we are at the end of our second week back and Class One is complete with all 30 children now in class. We are all feeling very proud of the new cohort in the way they have conducted themselves around school and in the kind and sensible way they carry out their learning each day and it has been lovely this week to watch them begin to form friendships with new children and get stuck into the many activities we have had planned for them this week.

This week, your child has very busy taking part in…

Circle times to discuss likes and dislikes

Painting in the art corner

Making ‘stick men’ based on the Julia Donaldson story

Learning about Autumnal changes and spotting signs of Autumn around the school

Collecting autumn leaves to create their own ‘leaf hedgehogs’

Trying out some number games on the class computers

Learning single letter phonic sounds and forming them without taking our pen off of the whiteboard/ moving the pen in the correct direction.

A thank you once again for your patience at the gate during home-time and morning drop offs as we learn all of your names and faces. As you can imagine, learning parents, grandparents, child-minders, aunties and other family friends for each child is not an easy task but we hope to get a little quicker at this soon. In the meantime, please continue to inform a member of office staff or class adult if someone new is picking up your child, as we will be unable to let your child leave unless we have had consent and notification of this.

Reminders

We are very proud of all the children who have been leaving their parents at the gate and walking in completely independently. Children are encouraged to enter the classroom independently in the morning and so we ask that you could reinforce this and remain at the gate during drop off times; the children will be greeted with lots of praise if they are able to do so and even earn stickers! Obviously if your child is very distressed, we appreciate that you may wish to walk your child into class still over the next week.

Lastly, you may notice that over the course of the year, your child may come home wearing a badge on a Friday afternoon. These are from our Friday awards assembly in which your child can win a values, effort or achievement award. Your child will be able to wear their badge for the whole week but will hand it back in the following Friday morning so that it can be given to the next person. We ask kindly that children look after their badges each week and that parents ensure that the children bring it back in on the following Friday. Thank you for your cooperation.

What a successful week we have had in Class One this week! All children have settled extremely well into their new routine and it has been a joy to get to know some of our new intake over the course of the week. The children have been up to many different and exciting activities including rainbow sand mark-making, painting, PE lessons with Mr Jefferies, number work, phonics sessions and even creating their own mud-recipes in our brand new mud kitchen! It is also really lovely to see so many children coming in to the classroom independently now; we are very proud of them and how positively they are entering the classroom each day.

A big thank you to all parents for being so patient at the gate as we learn all of your names and faces and also for ensuring that all school uniform is clearly named’. This has made things much easier for us all this week and is very much appreciated!

Reminders.

A reminder to all parents that children’s reading books will be changed each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Your child will be heard read by the class adults throughout the week so please ensure these come into school each day in book-bags.

Water bottles should contain still, unflavoured water only. Your child may also bring in one fruit or vegetable item each day to eat at their snack-time. We ask that you do not send in cereal bars/ crackers/ yoghurt covered fruit or other similar items please.

As part of the Early Years Curriculum, children are encouraged to work and learn outside as part of an ‘extended classroom’ in out outside area. We have a saying in Reception that there is no such thing as bad weather, only wrong clothing! We therefore ask that children bring in some wellington boots to keep in class each day, so that they are suitably dressed for all weathers. Some of our best learning and experimenting comes from playing in the rain and with puddles!

Lastly, all children are expected to change for PE at school with a level of independence. Whilst we will always help those who need it, we encourage children to ‘have a go’ at doing up/ undoing buttons and ties, before seeking help from a grown up. We therefore ask that you practise this at home with your child over the next half term or so, so that they can get used to dressing and undressing with confidence.

Thank you to all for a great first week, it has been lovely chatting to some of you at the gate and I look forward to getting to know you and the children more over the coming year!

This week in Class One, we have been busy all week with sports day practise and rehearsals for our Class One assembly. We hope that you all enjoyed watching the finished result this afternoon, we have had great fun practising this week, especially the ‘hot air ballooning’ yoga song! A huge well done to all children in class for taking part and learning their lines so quickly, for their fantastic performance skills and of course for their participation and sportsmanship during sports day this week, I am very proud of you all!

Next week, we will be back into our usual daily routine for another week of ‘under the sea’ themed learning… next week is shark week. We will be visiting our class library for information about sharks, discovering if they are as deadly as we think and using our maths skills, to see how big the different species grow to. If you have any information or artefacts at home related to sharks, we would love to see them in school so please feel free to research or bring in books to share!

Notices/ Reminders

‘Pirate-ship’ junk modelling seems to be very popular in class at the moment and so any more plastic bottles and plastic trays would be much appreciated.

WOW forms have now been replenished so let me know at the door if you would like more to fill in.

This week in Class One, we have been practising our sports skills, in preparation for next Wednesday’s annual Sports Day! We have been to the school field to try out different throws, jumping techniques and even some sprinting on the track; we have had great fun!

We have also been practising our story writing skills this week. Miss Ingle set us all the challenge, to write our own ‘under the sea’ adventure story and was amazed by some of the work that was produced.Many of the children were able to write almost a whole page of writing and even added finger spaces, capital letters and full stops.Needless to say, our Class adults are feeling extremely proud of us all this week!

Here are some of the other things we have been up to, in our child initiated time this week:

Henry: I made an ant man costume out of paper and I stuck it on with sticky tape.

Massimo: I made my own learning journey for Honey the guide dog. She went in our role play area and I was being her key worker!

Shomi: I did counting on the ladybird game

Raphael: I used all the polydron to make some actual 3D shapes…. A cuboid which is a stretched out cube and a square based pyramid.

Presley: I’ve been finding out about Steve Backshall from Fierce and I told the class all about the giant emu he saw.

Edward: I made a red volcano with the polydron.

Harry J: I’ve been writing labels on pictures of under the sea and coral.

Ben: I went on ‘funky mummy’ on the computers and I had to add up to 20 and make the mummy dance! It was so funny!

REMINDERS

Don’t forget that next Wednesday is sports Day! If your child hasn’t already, can they please bring in their coloured t-shirt, (coloured teams are listed on the Class One gate).